Women accountants in H&S: Accustomed to her face;

Page 1

warn
TWWWWWWMVWWIWWWW
It has been a quiet revolution, but it
has been a profound one. The recent
influx of women to the professional
staff of Haskins & Sells has brought a
permanent change to our Firm and to
the working life of our people. Beyond
our walls, in the broader sphere of the
public accounting profession as a
whole, the concept that educated
women can perform equally with men
—and should not be arbitrarily barred
from doing so—is an idea whose time
has come.
It is most gratifying to the Firm that
this revolution has been taking place
smoothly. The difficulties that some
anticipated at its outset have proved
minor when compared to the construc­tive
way in which our organization, by
and large, has adjusted to the change.
Some men who may have hesitated to
hire women accountants five years ago
are now among their most enthusiastic
boosters.
Only yesterday (in the 76-year life
of H&S) it was almost as difficult for a
woman accountant to join our staff or
that of other national firms as for the
scriptural camel to pass through the
eye of a needle. Today she must have
good college grades, and she should
show determination and presence—but
she walks through the H&S door side
by side with her men classmates. We
have, as Professor Henry Higgins said
of Eliza Doolittle, become
To be sure, there are differences be­tween
men and women applicants for
positions on the H&S staff; no one with
normal eyesight and emotional reac­tions
would claim otherwise. But the
evidence is mounting that such differ­ences
play a role that approaches zero
when it comes to job performance. As
the evidence of equal job performance
mounts up, minds have been changing.
The old hesitations, uncertainties, fears
and question marks have been fading
away.
What has emerged is a new attitude,
running from the top to the bottom of
Haskins & Sells, that an accountant is
an accountant—period. He may be a
light-haired guy, or she may be a
blonde. He may wear a Brooks Brothers
suit, or she may wear a tailored
Neiman-Marcus number, or a mini of
reasonable length. But in the end it's
the work that counts, not the sex of the
worker.
It may come as a surprise to a good
many people in Haskins & Sells to learn
that as of October 31, 1970 there were
181 women on the professional staff,
summer interns having left. Of this
number, three were principals and el­even
were senior accountants. Strange
as it may seem today, there were no re­liable
statistics kept just four or five
years ago on the number of women in
professional positions in H&S practice
offices. The evidence of memory is
clear, however, that they were very few
and far between—a rarity in the offices
where there were any women account­ants
at all.
An indication of the increased pace
at which women have come into the
Firm recently can be seen in the num­bers
of women attending summer orien­tation
seminars that were held in New
York. In 1966 and 1967 there were
about 20 attending each year. In 1968
the number rose to 42, then to 68 the
next year, and to 70 in 1970.
A humorous sidelight to women's at­tending
the seminars arose from the
difficulty, in a few cases, of telling
women from men by their names alone.
Four years ago the practice offices
would send to the Executive Office
their lists of names without specifying
which were women. It is said (and this
may be purely EO folklore) that an un­suspecting
personnel director once
made a double room assignment in a
New York hotel without realizing that
one of the pair was among the new
wave of women accountants. Nor is it
wwwwww99Wli9Www
* / » ,
jhm